Future Trends and Current State of Smart City Concepts: A Survey

Intelligent systems are wanting for cities to cope with limited spaces and resources across the world. As a result, smart cities emerged mainly as a result of highly innovative ICT industries and markets, and additionally, they have started to use novel solutions taking advantage of the Internet of Things (IoT), big data and cloud computing technologies to establish a profound connection between each component and layer of a city. Several key technologies congregate to build a working smart city considering human requirements. Even though the smart city concept is an advanced solution for today's cities, recently, more living spaces should be discovered, and the concept of a smart city could be moved to these alternative living spaces, namely floating cities. The concept of a floating city emerged as a novel solution due to rising sea levels and land scarcity in order to provide alternative living spaces for humanity. In this article, our main research question is to raise awareness on the current state of smart city concepts across the world by understanding the key future trends, including floating cities, by motivating researchers and scientists through new IoT technologies and applications. Therefore, we present a survey of smart city initiatives and analyze their key concepts and different data management techniques. We performed a detailed literature survey and review by applying a complex literature matrix including terms, like smart people, smart economy, smart governance, smart mobility, smart environment, and smart living. We also discuss multiple perspectives of smart floating cities in detail. With the proposed approach, recent advances and practical future opportunities for smart cities can be revealed. © 2013 IEEE